10 Helpful Tips for BYOD; White House releases new Digital Government Strategy

This week, CRN’s Robert Westervelt published a helpful guide on the myths surrounding BYOD and mobile security. Some of the more surprising facts include:

·“Mobile malware may dominate headlines, but according to the recent LinkedIn Information Security Community survey of 1,600 IT administrators, data loss is a bigger priority in their organizations than malware (75 percent versus 47 percent).”

·“Gartner, Forrester Research and other analyst firms are tracking more than two-dozen mobile device management vendors vying for business. Yet security experts say most firms can provide basic security measures.” According to respondents to the LinkedIn survey, about 60 percent of organizations have not adopted a BYOD policy.

·“IT administrators in the LinkedIn survey indicated that 28 percent of all corporate data is accessed through mobile devices and that data can be accessed by over 50,000 business productivity apps regardless of whether they are mobile enabled.” It’s a wise move for companies to look into the weaknesses in back-end systems that business productivity apps may tap into.

We’ve also been following the news surrounding the White House’s release of its new Digital Government Strategy. InformationWeek’s Wyatt Kash reported on the news stating, “The guidelines include a baseline of standard security requirements for mobile computing, a mobile computing decision framework for federal agencies and a mobile security reference architecture.” In other words, the government is cracking down on all their mobile security requirements and developing new policies to tackle potential threats to government-issued mobile devices.

“The CIO Council writes that it’s still developing, and plans to publish, more detailed guidance on the controls in the overlays and where security provided by an MDM or MAM may compensate for controls that would otherwise need to be provided through traditional implementation of the NIST guidance,” reportedFierceMobileGovernment’sMolly Berhart Walker.